This invention relates in general to communication of information by computers and more specifically to controlling a rendering engine with commands to play back a production on a computer system.
A major use of modern computer systems is in the presentation of productions including image and sound. Productions can include animations, scene rendering, simulations, digitized video, three-dimensional sound, or other audio and visual effects. A problem with such applications is that the amount of data that needs to be transferred and displayed is enormous, often exceeding the limits of the commonly available computing power, data channels, or other resources.
For example, it has long been a promise of the Internet to act as a broadcast network so that real-time streaming audio/video information can approach the resolution and frame rate of television. However, the vast amount of information in the form of digital data that must be conveyed from a content source to many thousands, or millions, of end user computers at a high rate has proven to be more than the Internet can handle.
Efforts to try to solve the problems of Internet delivery of productions tend to fall into two categories. The first is minimizing the amount of data that needs to be transferred by using data compression on the raw, original audio and video information. The second approach is to improve the ability of the Internet to deliver large amounts of data.
Many data compression standards can be found on the Internet today, such as the standards promulgated by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). Other standards include Microsoft Corporation's Audio Video Interleave (AVI) or Apple Computer Corporation's Quicktime. Even though these standards can achieve compression ratio's of about 20-50 to 1, this is still not sufficient to allow so-called “full-screen, full-motion” video to be delivered reliably over the Internet. Because of this, the attempts at “video” broadcasts over the Internet have used very small windows of low-resolution and low frame rate (perhaps 15 frames per second (fps)) broadcasts.
As far as improving the ability of the Internet to deliver large amounts of data; efforts such as multi-casting (e.g., the M-Bone architecture) have resulted in limited success in relatively localized portions of the Internet. Such approaches have failed to improve the Internet's bandwidth to the point where Internet broadcasts can realistically compete with television broadcasts in terms of high-quality audio and video presentations.
An alternative to real-time streaming of a production is to download the production in non-real-time. That is, the production is downloaded as a large file which can be played back at a later time. Since the production, once downloaded, resides on a user's local hard disk in the user's computer system, the throughput of data is much higher and much more reliable than over a network such as the Internet. Alternatively, the production can be obtained in compact disk—read only memory (CDROM), or Digital Versatile Disk (DVD) formats with similar benefits. A problem with the downloading approach is that the download is slow. A production on the order of minutes at a reasonably high resolution amounts to tens of megabytes in size and requires hours of download time over a typical modem connection to the Internet. Even where there is a fast Internet connection, the production may require dozens of megabytes of storage on the user's hard disk. Even as download rates increase, the resolution, frame rate and frame size of productions is increasing, as is the number of Internet users. Thus, the Internet's ability to deliver video content continues to lag far behind the public's desire to access the video content over the Internet.
Another problem with making the entire production available in stored frames at the user's computer is that the content provider does not control the time of viewing and can not restrict availability of the contents. The provider must also deal with distribution of CDROMs, DVDs, etc., or with hosting the production for download over expensive servers, storage arrays and high-bandwidth channels at relatively high cost. It is an added inconvenience to the user to obtain the media by purchasing it at a point-of-sale retailer, mail order, etc.
Other technology areas that implicate technology for displaying visual and audio information over a network include web languages such as “Lingo” by Macromedia and “Java” as defined by Sun Microsystems. These languages allow a programmer to define and animate objects and sounds on an end-user's computer. Typically, these languages are complex and mathematical and are directed to two dimensional animation or layout. This is primarily because they are intended to be used in a web page where a “book” analogy, rather than a television analogy, is followed.
The productions produced by web languages require that the user executes a web browser at a computer. The program that defines the production must be loaded completely into the computer. Once loaded, the program executes to create a short display, animation or image or sound effect. Primitive games have also been developed using this technology. The approach of web languages is not suited to generating a broadcast quality, television-like production over the Internet because it is complex to define even a few seconds of production, is not oriented toward rendering real-world environments, requires complete downloading of the program before executing and does not render realistic, or full-featured, three dimensional scenes.
A final technology area is network-oriented three dimensional games. These use a high performance rendering engine executing on a user's computer. If the user is playing in a multiplayer mode, information as to other player's positions and actions is transmitted to each player's computer so that a character that emulates the other players' actions appears in the game. Each emulated player performs actions under player direction to run, jump, shoot, etc.
The rendering engines in such games are very sophisticated with high resolution and color, and can achieve frame rates at, or above, television frame rates. However, this approach does not achieve a broadcast television production goal since the point of view is completely controlled by a player. That is, the player is able to move about in an interactive environment. The position and view are completely under the control of the player. Each player's movement is under control of each respective player. Thus, there is no possibility for storytelling as in a traditional television or movie production. Rather, these games focus solely on allowing the player to have complete control in a pre-defined, relatively static, environment.
Attempts have been made to make “movies” that run on the rendering engines. An early popular rendering engine is the “Quake” engine produced by Id Software to allow players to hunt-and-kill other opponents in a multiplayer first-person shooter type of game. So-called “Quake movies” are created by turning on a data capture mode of the Quake engine and moving a character's point of view. The character acts as the “camera” since wherever the character looks determines the part of the scene that is recorded. Any characters that appear onscreen must be controlled by human operators in real time while the data is being captured. The requirement of coordinated human control of characters in real time makes creating dramatic and diverse productions extremely difficult in a Quake movie. Early attempts at short Quake movies such as “Blahbalicious,” and “Operation Bayshield” are amusing but limited parodies on the original world of the Quake game. The productions must be downloaded completely and then played back by the Quake engine to re-create the production. Deviations from the models and structures in the Quake world were difficult to achieve and required designing entirely new models with computer-aided drafting, modeling and painting programs.
As discussed above, producing a computer production with any of the prior approaches is complex. This is because the use of computer tools, engines, or other utilities and applications, requires modeling, rendering, animation, painting, and other complex and specialized software. Typically, these applications are mathematical in nature and are very time-consuming to learn and use. Also, many productions require special tools to produce a computer production. For example, motion capture, software effects, defining camera movement, building virtual models, performing audio recording, digitizing and synchronization, all require knowledge of specialized procedures and specific software or hardware. Such productions also do not lend themselves to multicast or streaming broadcasts of the productions over the Internet because of the large amount of data required to be transferred.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a system that allows effective delivery of high-quality broadcast productions over a computer network, such as the Internet. Such a system should provide delivery with a minimum amount of bandwidth required in the transmission medium, and a minimum of resources in the reception and storing of the production. It is also desirable to reduce the complexity, skill level and time requirements of producing such productions, especially from a storyteller's point of view.